Early Concepts

I am currently in the process of developing a design for the 'maker movement community'. This community is made up of millions of people, with different backgrounds, who identify with building and making their own projects. The maker community utilizes the growing technology of rapid prototyping such as 3D printing as it breaks many barriers of traditional production methods and is becoming relatively low cost.

I am taking a look at how the maker community uses this technology and I hope to design something that can make this process more sustainable. The filed of biomimicry is newly emerging with the collaboration between biologists and designers. Biomimicry is applying design forms, processes or systems from nature to solve human design problems. 3D printing has allowed for many advancements in this field and its leading to a more sustainable design future.

With my 4th year Industrial Design thesis I have been researching the intersection between biomimicry and 3D printing to create something for the maker movement. I hope to apply 3D printing to make biomimicry more accessible to the maker community, and from this I hope to inspire millions of people to consider sustainable processes when taking manufacturing into their own hands.

I am in the early stages of concepts and I am considering ideas such as; new 3D printing applications with recyclable materials, a maker space for public collaboration and accessible rapid prototyping, and a bio-inspired modular workspace for makers.